The COVID conundrum

Alison Chamberlain from Rotary North Harbour

“Should sports teams and athletes compete overseas during the Covid-19 pandemic?”

Rotary North Harbour’s Great Debate between Carmel College and Westlake Girls High School thrashed this out with counter arguments and rebuttals interspersed with humour.

The teams, in order of speaking, included Members of Parliament:

Affirmative (Carmel College) - Madison Lockyer, Annabel Rhodes, MP David Seymour (Epsom), Ella Copley

Negative (Westlake Girls High School) - Aneta Du, Grace Chen, Lily Qi, MP Chlöe Swarbrick (Auckland Central)

A coin toss to delegate affirmative or negative roles half an hour before the start left limited time to prepare arguments. However both teams are very experienced debaters, the MPs perhaps less so with the strict rules of debate 😆, but they certainly brought a different approach.

The venue was packed and the adjudicators from the Auckland Debating Society congratulated both teams on their level of debating skills before awarding the moot to the negative.

An entertaining event that provided the students with a wonderful opportunity for personal development and interaction with sitting MPs whilst raising funds for Rotary projects.

Thanks to Partners Life Insurance for their sponsorship

Look out for next year’s debate.